Tokyo Vice

by Jake Adelstein

  “How much did Kajiyama have in the casino?”

  “Between two casinos, about four million U.S. Probably has another million in U.S. bank accounts. He had two million dollars in cash deposited with the MGM Grand’s offices here. Not bad, huh?”

  “How the hell do you collect two million dollars of American currency in Japan?”

  “You just need a lot of flunkies with a lot of time. Anyway, if you’re trying to follow the money, look in your homeland, Jake-san.”

  I felt a shiver up my spine. This sounded like a major scoop. And it was. It would certainly change my life.

  We chatted for another hour. I asked him about his parents, and he asked me about my family. I showed him some pictures. But when I asked about the role of the Yamaguchi-gumi in Kajiyama’s operations, he didn’t give up anything more.

  I got home at five in the morning. I managed to sleep for about an hour before Beni woke up and crawled over and stuck her fingers in my nose. I had the whole day to spend with the family. It was like a holiday.

  On Tuesday, still keeping things to myself, I called up a friend, someone I could trust, at the FBI in Washington, D.C. He confirmed what Cyclops had said. He said the TMPD had already made visits to Las Vegas and had in fact seized $2 million in cash from the MGM Grand’s office in Tokyo. Cyclops’s figures were on the money. He wouldn’t tell me anything else, but it was enough for me to go to Chuckles and Harry with.

  Chuckles was shocked. “Are you serious? Where did you get that?”

  I thought it best not to mention my Yamaguchi-gumi connection. To admit that wouldn’t be good for my source or for me. So I told her it was the FBI, which was sort of true. She wanted to write up the story immediately; I suggested we talk to Harry Potter first.

  Harry was stretched out on the sofa trying to open the centerfold of the Weekly Gendai when Chuckles and I went up to him. As he listened, he grew quite animated, realizing that this could be an impressive little scoop—especially since the cash had already been seized. Then he did something he rarely did: he took off his glasses and polished them, and he smiled. He smiled so wide that his teeth showed. It was weird. There was a gap between his two front teeth that made him look like Alfred E. Neuman.

  “Jake, you may not be as worthless as we thought you were,” he said. It was a huge compliment, and I’m sure I beamed (or blushed). He gathered his number two guy, and the four of us went out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant with a private dining room to discuss strategy. Harry wanted me to gather as much from the FBI side as I could; Harry and his number two would try to get confirmation from the TMPD top guys; Chuckles was ordered to lie low for a bit. She was our ace in the hole and would negotiate with the TMPD division chief for the scoop. In order for her to maintain positive relations with the chief, she would have to be free to blame any undue snooping around and stepping on toes on me.

  “Tell him Jake heard it from the CIA,” Harry said. “Everyone thinks he’s an agent anyway. Tell him Jake’s out of control, has no understanding of the delicate relationship between the police and police reporters. Convince him that if we don’t get the scoop, Jake will write it without your supervision, and who knows what kind of material he might reveal to damage the investigation. That should get his attention.”

  “Jake, sorry about this, eh?” Harry said, turning to me. “The chief will be pissed off, but he’s not someone you have to work with anyway. Maybe some top guys will blame you for making them rush—this probably would’ve been enormous publicity for the TMPD—but don’t let it bother you.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Besides, you’re a Jew. I’m sure you’re used to getting blamed for everything.”

  In a couple days, we had everything we needed. I made a deal with a local reporter in Las Vegas who did some footwork for me in return for information. I would write the story first in Japan, and then he would get the scoop in Vegas. The time difference and the fact that only one in ten million Americans read Japanese newspapers made this arrangement possible.

  Kajiyama was a “whale”—the Vegas term for a big-spending VIP. (A VIP, like a whale, is a rare species that consumes conspicuously.) He had been going to Vegas for more than ten years, and he had accounts with the casino as well as with a bank in California and had been withdrawing money in the United States. After a tip from U.S. authorities, the TMPD had, since summer, been sending officials to look into his Vegas transactions. The Department of Homeland Security, the Nevada Gaming Commission, and the FBI were all investigating him on suspicion of his violating U.S. money-laundering laws. The MGM Grand was making a token effort at cooperating with the investigation.

  Chuckles made a deal with the police division chief. Our scoop about Kajiyama and Vegas would be published first. Then the TMPD would announce its having seized more than $2 million of Kajiyama’s in Tokyo, likely the illegal profits of his loan shark shops. We’d get the scoop on that. The TMPD then planned to rearrest Kajiyama for violations of Japan’s money-laundering laws, while we’d get the scoop on the FBI’s investigation into Kajiyama’s money laundering in the United States.

  Harry was much amused with the idea of an article under the headline “A Whale Called Kajiyama.” In fact, as we stayed up until three in the morning working on the article, the idea started to seem funnier and funnier. Lack of sleep will do that.

  By mid-November, it was showtime: “Two Million Dollars Seized from Emperor of Loan Shark’s Safe Deposit Box.” This was followed up with articles on the FBI investigation and how Kajiyama had spent his money in Vegas. We had three hits in a row, and the competition was reeling. (Petty, I know, but these are the great joys of the police beat.) The TMPD was so meticulous about keeping everyone lined up in a row, it was very hard to break rank.

  I spoke with a Las Vegas reporter who said the Nevada Gaming Commission had gone on record about the case; hearing that brought me great relief. No matter how much fact-checking you do as a reporter in Japan, the risk you take for running an article without the official news release in your hands is high. The reward for a scoop doesn’t match the penalty for getting a story wrong. Then when the police arrested one of Kajiyama’s henchmen who had withdrawn more than a million dollars from Kajiyama’s account and traveled numerous times to the United States carrying attaché cases full of cash, I began to feel a little smug.

  To celebrate, I ran a mile and a half in less than twelve minutes. That was a first. I also did the unusual thing of going home early. I picked up my daughter from preschool, and the three of us, Beni, Mrs. Adelstein, and myself, had dinner together. It was a rare event.

  Some of our thunder was stolen a few weeks later when it was revealed that Kajiyama had stashed more than $50 million in a Swiss bank account with the help of a Japanese employee of Credit Suisse. Fifty million dollars was a lot more than several million dollars. The Swiss froze his account.

  The yakuza like foreign banks; they find them useful. Credit Suisse wasn’t the first foreign financial institution that had been used for money laundering. Citibank lost its private banking license in Japan in September 2004, in part because it was allegedly being used by the yakuza to launder money. According to a law enforcement figure familiar with the investigation, one of Citi Japan’s biggest customers was Saburo Takeshita, a corporate blood brother of Tadamasa Goto himself. Another source claimed that another bigwig in the Yamaguchi-gumi had a bank account with Citi—in his own name. I can think of several foreign investment firms that are shaking hands with the yakuza even now, but I don’t have enough money to afford to name them. (By the way, Citibank didn’t learn its lesson; the Japanese government punished them again in June 2009 for similar problems.)

  In any case, when the venue switched to Switzerland, Chuckles and Harry’s number two took over the story. Money laundering was too much for my little brain, and I had other stories I wanted to pursue. In particular, Goto Tadamasa and his mysterious liver transplant.

  Not all of the money Kajiyama deposited with
U.S. casino offices in Tokyo was seized. Around the time of Kajiyama’s arrest, one of Kajiyama’s henchmen called up the Caesars Palace representative in Tokyo and had them bring him $1 million in cash. The money was delivered to a parking lot in central Tokyo. Now, that’s service.

  Kajiyama never cracked. Finally, on February 9, 2005, he was sentenced to seven years of hard labor, but initially the Tokyo courts chose not to fine him 5 billion yen ($50 million, equal to the total he stole from people). We were disappointed. Who says crime doesn’t pay? The Emperor probably still has money stashed away that no one knows about. He’ll serve his time, and he’ll come out a very wealthy man.

  He didn’t cut much of a dashing figure in court, but you could see some of his charisma. He’s handsome and probably very charming. He had several mistresses who would vouch for that. They’re probably waiting for him. And his money.

  • • •

  Kajiyama’s henchmen dispersed after his conviction, and the Goryo-kai no longer exists under that name. Some of his disciples went on to run elaborate “it’s me” scams, which are sometimes complex operations where criminals impersonate the child or grandchild of a mark over the telephone, convincing the mark that because they are in trouble he should make an immediate cash transfer. These hardworking guys apparently didn’t make as much money with this new enterprise—but at least it was a dishonest living.

  Also pursuant to Kajiyama’s conviction, Japanese lending laws were revised to make the penalties for loan sharking much harsher, and a crystal-clear cap was set on interest rates that even legitimate consumer loan companies could charge. We can only hope that the Japanese are able to learn from their American counterparts and discover the joys of credit card debt. When that happens, we can look forward to the appearance of a Yamaguchi-gumi Visa or MasterCard. It’s the next logical step.

  PART 3

  Dusk

  The Empire of Human Trafficking

  People pay their respects to the dead in different ways. I would have bought flowers to place on her grave, but the body hadn’t shown up anywhere yet. So instead I pulled a 10,000-yen note out of my wallet and gave it to Fujiwara-san at the Polaris Project Japan. Polaris runs a hotline for human trafficking victims in Tokyo, and the folks there do a good job trying to raise public awareness.

  Fujiwara-san said that the number of phone calls to Polaris had gone up quite a bit in the last year, mostly from Korean and Eastern European women. She thanked me for the donation and asked if I knew a Russian speaker. I promised I’d try to find her one.

  I think I can trace the beginnings of burning out as a reporter to the period where I started covering this very nasty side of the Japanese sex industry. I didn’t even realize it was burning me out until it was way too late.

  If you spend enough years as a crime reporter, you get callous. It’s only natural. If you grieved for every victim or shared the pain of the family, you’d become a mental case. Murder, arson, armed robbery, family suicide, they all become routine. There’s a tendency to dehumanize the victims, sometimes to even be annoyed with them for ruining your day off or a planned vacation. It sounds horrible, and it is. But that’s how it works.

  I thought I knew a lot about the “dark side” of Japan. I’d covered the Lucie Blackman case, investigated a serial killer, nearly touched a body full of electricity, seen a man burn himself to death, and more. I thought I was pretty tough—in my own way.

  I had become very cynical. And I had become a little cold, and, when a reporter starts to cool down, it’s very hard for him or her to ever warm up again. We all build psychic armor around ourselves to cope with emotions and maintain control and meet our multiple deadlines. We have to.

  I had covered Kabukicho and hunted for tips in Roppongi. The girls at Maid Station had been very frank about how their whole operation worked. I was pretty conversant with the legalities of the sex-for-money industry in Japan. In fact, I thought the whole idea of sexual slavery was some urban myth created by puritanical bureaucrats in the West who didn’t understand Japan’s sex culture. But I was about to get a real lesson.

  It was November 2003 when my cell phone rang. “Moshi moshi,” I said, picking up.

  It was a foreign woman, no one I knew but someone who could speak fairly good Japanese. I listened for a bit but wasn’t making full sense of what she was saying. “Do you speak English?” I finally asked.

  “Well, yes. You do too, obviously. I apologize for making you suffer through my deplorable Japanese.”

  “Not a problem. It’s quite good. But since eigo is our native tongue, maybe it’d be better to use English, ne?”

  “A friend gave me your number. She’s a stripper at the Kama Sutra; she said you might be able to help.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well, at the place where I work, there are some new girls—from Poland, Russia, and Estonia—and they seem to be … under duress.”

  “Hmm. What do you mean?”

  “They’re being forced to work, and they’re not getting paid. They’re … like slaves.”

  “Like what?”

  “Slaves. That’s how I would describe it.”

  “And what kind of work do you do?”

  “I guess you could say I’m a prostitute,” she replied straightforwardly, without embarrassment. “Officially I’m an English teacher, but sleeping with men is how I earn my living.”

  “And you’re doing this by choice?”

  “Of course. But these new girls they’ve brought into the club … it’s not the same for them. They don’t want to be doing this. They got tricked—forced—into doing this. They’re always sobbing, they can’t leave the building during the day.”

  “I see,” I said. It was a pathetic response, I knew, but I didn’t know what else to say and it afforded me time to process the situation. I asked my caller what she wanted me to do.

  “You’re a newspaper reporter. Write a story. Find out what’s going on and expose the bastards. And help get those girls out of there.”

  It seemed like a hell of a tall order coming from someone who’d just called me out of the blue. I was about to say I’d look into it when something about her voice went ding in my head. “You say your friend gave you my number. Have we met?”

  There was a pause.

  “Have we?” I asked again.

  “Well, when you were working on the Lucie Blackman story, talking to working girls at the bar, I kind of insulted you to your face.”

  Over time, I had learned the rules of engagement for getting information from strippers, dancers, and other females in the evening entertainment trade. Apparently this young woman had met me before I’d learned those rules. Perhaps I’d been rude, or just not that savvy. Either way, she had called me an asshole. I remembered that much.

  Her name was Helena. That wasn’t her real name, of course, but it did suit her. We met at a Starbucks in Roppongi, on the second floor. She was dressed in a black skirt, a slim-cut black leather jacket over a lime green blouse, and knee-high black leather boots. I have to say, she looked good. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the only makeup she appeared to have on was a ripe pomegranate–colored lipstick. She had a small mole over her upper lip.

  I introduced myself as if we were meeting for the first time, giving her my meishi. She didn’t give me hers until later. We talked about the weather, we sipped our coffee, and then she told me her story.

  Helena had come to Japan in 2001 from Australia. She started teaching English at Berlitz and doing a little hostessing on the side. One evening after class, she had drinks with one of her students, a businessman in his fifties, and ended up accompanying him to a love hotel. When they were done, he laid five 10,000-yen notes (about $500) on the bed and said it was for her “travel expenses.”

  Helena gradually picked up more patrons and eventually, to ensure a steady income, took a job at an exclusive “gentlemen’s club” called the Den of Delicious. She kept her private clients, but during the day she wou
ld perform services for the walk-in trade.

  “I’m a prostitute by choice. I like sex. The money is far better than I could make teaching English. I don’t have a problem with what I do. What I have a problem with is women who don’t want to be prostitutes being forced into it. I have a problem with the assholes making them do it.

  “There are two guys running the show in Roppongi and supplying girls for the club in Shibuya where I work. One guy is Japanese—everyone calls him Slick—1*and there’s a Dutch-Israeli guy named Viktor. They own five or six clubs; they recruit the women overseas, mostly in poor countries, through ads or brokers, and they bring them to Japan. They stick them in sex clubs, and they rip them off. The women are totally dependent on these bastards. So they end up like sex slaves.

  “What I heard was that, initially, they’re promised more money than they can imagine, but when they get here, it’s a whole different story. They have to fuck to eat, because they don’t have any options. And then they’ve got all these costs that they were never told about that get subtracted from their earnings. Slick tells them that since they’re working illegally, they’ve got to work for him. Because he’s legit—if you can believe that. If they don’t want to work for him, that’s up to them, but they aren’t going to find work anywhere else in Roppongi. One girl I knew went to the police; she was threatened with being arrested herself. And then she ended up having to service the fucking cop.

  “Viktor tells people he’s been here six years. He started with dancers and moved up to prostitution; he’s very proud of himself. He says he knows what kind of girls Japanese men like—blond and blue-eyed. Takes a lot to figure that out. Helps too if they’re helpless, because then they have no choice but to do what they’re told.

  “Viktor likes to act like a nice guy—until it comes to money. Then he’s the fucking devil in disguise … Slick, he’s married and has a daughter.”

  Helena’s story had the ring of truth. I didn’t see any reason for her to lie. I didn’t know, though. She was an observer, not a victim herself; this was hearsay; maybe she had an ax to grind. I told her I’d have to speak with one of the girls directly.